ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that sympathy has been underestimated, oversimplified and misunderstood by Amartya Sen’s interpreters, and the analysis which follows might even lead one to contest Sen’s claim that sympathy is ‘in some ways, an easier concept to analyse than commitment’. Sympathy has been treated by Sen’s interpreters as the weaker sibling of commitment. The chapter aims to distinguish two types of sympathy found in ‘Rational Fools’, one contemplative, which comprises a feeling, the other active, which motivates action. It focuses on active sympathy and scrutinizes a technical term which Sen introduces in ‘Rational Fools’, namely, actions based on sympathy. The chapter examines expositions of sympathy in Sen’s work and provides account for the way in which the concept may be deemed to have become more orthodox vis-à-vis mainstream rational choice theory than it was in 1977.